Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 30, 2023

I Believe in the Holy Ghost

A Sermon Series on the Apostles' Creed

Lucy Forster-Smith
Senior Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Isaiah 61:1–10
John 3: 1–12

We continue our series on the Apostles’ Creed that launched in late February. Can we believe how much territory of our faith could be embedded in this very short, easily memorized creed?

Today’s portion is short: “I believe in the Holy Ghost.” It is deceivingly short, really, because there are so many questions about the third person in the Trinity. Unlike God, who has a robust role in Jewish and Christian history as the one who launched the whole project of world, universe, animals, trees, seas, land, and humans, the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit is vague, effusive, the unseen mover.

And it is unlike Jesus, the second one in the Trinity, who came to walk among us, wiped tears and warned tyrants. He was a bridge to God, as God made human. The Holy Spirit, yes, Holy Ghost is the unseen mover, the one who sometimes plunges us into our depths. It is presence and not person.

There are many expressions of this third person in the Trinity: Is it Holy Ghost/the Holy Spirit? Wind? Fire? Comfort? Breath? Unpredictable? Infusing? On the one hand the Spirit is a warm bath and on the other hand it is polar plunge — a holy wake-up call.

We tend to be thinking Christians, we Presbyterians. Many of us prefer the rational, the factual, the decent and in order. Thus we may feel in the dark with our understanding of the Spirit of God. And you know what? We are not alone. We may find ourselves as puzzled as the man named Nicodemus.

Having heard this scripture read today, we all may have realized we get who Nicodemus is. He is the one with walls sagging under the weight of his diplomas. He asks a million questions. He is the sought-after keynote speaker with the roll of the tongue, politician’s hair. He is the natural leader, the spiritually open and curious, yet also, yes, rational. There are Nicodemus types in church leadership positions, not only lay people but some of us who are clergy. We may even come face-to-face with Nic in our own families or among our closest friends. Nicodemus may be you and me.

In the case of the one we just read about in the Bible, he is so interested and curious about the itinerant rabbi who is making waves in the area that Nicodemus decides to pay a call on Jesus. He wants to get a closer view on where Jesus is coming from. It begins at night. Perhaps dinner was over and the disciples are sitting in an olive grove with Jesus. They may hear the snapping of twigs and then see a leader of the synagogue coming up the path. We can just imagine.

Nicodemus sees Jesus and asks if he can have a word with him. Anyone observing can see that Nicodemus is uncomfortable approaching the rabbi, Jesus. It probably is not a surprise that Nicodemus comes under the cloak of night. He may not want to tarnish his reputation by an encounter in the light of day. After all, he is a teacher of Israel, a scholar, leader, theologian, brilliant. And so, as any scholar does, he seeks out others who are in his intellectual league.

Nicodemus knows the rules of engagement. He’s heard of Jesus’ work and pays the compliment: “Rabbi, I know you are a teacher who has come from God. Yes, there is no way you could be doing the signs that we all have seen or heard about unless you had the direct line.”

It is clear that Nicodemus thinks that faith comes from evidence, from seeing what happens and then drawing logical conclusions. His engagement is tightly constructed, airtight, as a matter of fact, and no wind, spirit, gale can penetrate this mental acrobatic.

Sure, Nicodemus can appreciate what Jesus does; he can marvel at the miracles, he can see that Jesus heals, casts out demons, turns water into wine. What Nicodemus does not recognize is that the one he is encountering in that moment is going to ask that he throw caution to the wind! And it becomes quickly evident that Nic is so caught in his own landlocked reality that he couldn’t set sail out of it to allow the gift of God’s new creation to take hold.

Jesus cuts to the chase. Though it may look like Jesus’ works arise from the alignment of good practice and a dash of God, the stark and stunning truth is that the only path to faith is to be all in, and by that, what he means is that you have to be born anew, again, from above. Everything, he means everything, is reordered, infused with the God-genes.

Jesus likely looked Nic square in the eye and said, this is about fresh air — the Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit blowing afresh through your weary bones. And Nicodemus cannot seem to set aside the air-tight structures to let it in. He may have even smirked a little or rolled his eyes when he thought Jesus was not looking.

“Really? Am I to go back to the womb and be pushed out again?” He may have thought that this conversation was a waste of time. But Jesus complicates it further: the way home, that is the way to God’s light, God’s joy, God’s maternity ward, is through water and the Spirit — yes, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit. Even with his vast degrees, his intellectual acumen, all of the hours poring over jots and tittles, Nicodemus is still in the dark. And the last thing we hear in this dialogue is Nicodemus muttering, “How can this be?” He waits, and then he evaporates from the scene.

What holds him back? What holds us back? What holds the church back? Where is Spirit at work in our midst?

The Holy Spirit has many expressions — many biblical terms, as a matter of fact: Wind? Fire? Comfort? Breath? Unpredictable? Infusing? In this passage, the Spirit is the wind or breath that blows where it wills. This Spirit, as Amy Plantinga Pauw says, is “on the loose in the world in surprising and disruptive ways, transcending human understanding and control. No human rules or traditions can contain the Spirit. Like fire, the Spirit is powerful and unpredictable, bringing light and warmth to cold and dark places” (Amy Plantinga Pauw, Feasting on the Gospels, p. 57).

But what tends to happen is that in times of great transition or times when we can’t see our way forward we batten down the hatches. We want, like Nicodemus, to make everything predictable, to control the outcome, to see things in literalistic ways and dismiss the rich upending of our assumptions. And in so doing, we stand with Nicodemus, waiting for a breakthrough but bound by a world of our own making.

This must have been the point when Jesus looked Nic in the eye and with every ounce of convincing power leveled the challenge. “You’ve got to be born again, man. Look me in the eye. I am here from God because things are really rough in this end of the universe. I am here to let you know that you don’t have to sneak around in the dark but you can come to Iife — yes life!”

The generative power of the Spirit swoops in not because it is so maverick, but because it is so formative. Someone has called the Spirit the “wild child” of the Godhead. And I can certainly say that our friend Nicodemus struggled to step up to that beat. I don’t get a wild child vibe from Mr. Stuffy. And there are certainly times when I wouldn’t be set to march to that beat myself. Yes, it is important to turn the mirror around on us, because there are many moments, especially this one in our life together here at Fourth Church, when we may want to clutch onto any semblance of certainty, any absolute, some platitude, or some authority figure that we think will make it all like we thought it should be.

Indeed, right now in the life of this community I realize that we may default to what is known, familiar, certain, absolute. And at some level this is what may get us through the next weeks. But in time, trust me, the probability of God’s awakening, wind-swept, astonishing promise will call with a fresh voice and asks us to be born anew in the Spirit of God. It will arise from the very foundations of this church and take us to places we never, ever imagined! This may make us habitually restless, call us to listen in new ways, and lead us to be swept away by the most astonishing promise that God can give us, which is to go with God in the Spirit. Can you imagine what it would be like to have each and every one of us be “all in” in daring to be a new creation in God and to be born with the Spirit’s power, to be born of God’s Holy Spirit? Do we affirm our faith in the creed’s words: “I believe in the Holy Ghost?”

For some reason as I was writing this sermon C.S. Lewis’ book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe came to mind. In it four children find their way into a magical land called Narnia ruled by an oppressive queen — the White Witch — who forces all of Narnia to live in an eternal winter. Near the beginning of the book, the children, wandering through the woods looking for a friend, stumble upon movement in the snow and go closer, wondering what it might be.

“Whatever it is,” says Peter, “it’s dodging us. It’s something that doesn’t want to be seen.”

“It’s — it’s a kind of animal,” says Susan.

Then it appears from behind a tree. The animal puts its paw against its mouth, signaling them to be quiet. It disappears again.

The children eventually find themselves taken in by what turns out to be a talking beaver, whose name is, well, Beaver. Beaver tells them many things of Narnia and the White Witch, including telling them about Aslan, the Lion, Narnia’s hope — Aslan.

Early on in the book, though, we don’t learn much of the character of Aslan himself, except what Beaver shares on that cold winter night. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Beaver tells them, “They say Aslan is on the move — perhaps already landed.” And when he says it,

“A very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning — either a terrifying one, which turns the whole dream into a nightmar,e or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into the dream again. It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside.” (Adapted from Anna Tew’s “Aslan Is on the Move,” The Overcaffeinated Lutheran blog, 26 June 2016).

My friends, the Holy Spirit of God is not just a jump, it is a jump start! And when that Spirit of God shows up all that rails against uncertainty, all that shakes us to the quick, all that asks for our assent, takes hold of us, births us anew, and infuses our very life with the power of love. Yes, the deep and pervasive power of Love bids us welcome, bids our feeble hearts to come home by the power of that Holy Spirit. This means to be all in, all the time.

Think of your own life. What has such a grip of possibility on you that it won’t let up? What would happen if you allowed yourself to let the wave of such awakening crash over you?

And what about this congregation? Are we all in? Is the grip of the Holy Spirit’s fire, the Wild Child Spirit asking us to let go and let God? Yes, truly let go and receive such power that we never imagined?

I am so convinced that the Spirit is on the move. God is ready to work in our lives! Do you feel it? Do you see it? Like Jesus’ invitation to Nicodemus, there is much, yes, much to come. So get ready. Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church